Strategy+Design

Traditional business-to-business lead generation strategies like cold calling, unsolicited site visits, and email worked a few years ago but will not deliver great results today. Social media, mobile technology and content marketing has changed the B2B landscape forever.

Inbound marketing strategies are now generating more demand for business products and services than traditional marketing ever could because more and more B2B buyers are influenced by social, mobile and video. That means B2B firms need to catch up and adapt by creating useful content that nurtures relationships along the long sales cycle.

To successfully convert B2B leads today, you have to strike a balance between traditional and digital marketing techniques. But instead of using the phone and email for cold calls or unproductive site visits, rejuvenate your sales and marketing by following these five steps:

1. Elevate Your Brand Image. Imagine doing the most important business presentation of your life in a faded suit, wrinkled shirt, B.O. and bad breath. It wouldn’t matter how good your stuff is, your credibility would suffer. Corporate “Image Hygiene” is no different. Clean up your brand image so your company looks credible. Check out 3 Ways to Improve B2B Brand Experience for more help on elevating your brand.
2. Create Useful Content. Don’t write content to fill up another blog or publish a bunch of techno-mumbo-jumbo whitepapers that only Sheldon Copper could understand. Many times the people (remember we are dealing with people) tasked to research B2B products and services for their peers don’t have PhD’s. Content is not easy but it is vital for B2Bs to succeed today. Check out B2B Content Marketing: 3 Steps to a Content-Centric Organization for more info.
3. Improve Your SEO. The whole point of creating a web presence is to be found. Google is always changing it’s search algorithms to weed out the riffraff and ensure relevant and meaningful search results land on page 1. You need to be on top of these ever-changing SEO standards so that your page rankings don’t suffer. Check out B2B Inbound Marketing: How to get your brand into the mix for details on why inbound marketing helps improve search results.
4. Cultivate Your Social B2B Communities. If you still think social marketing does not apply to your business, stop reading now. Instead, I urge you to read this post from ExploreB2B: 8 Arguments for Companies to Stay Out of Social Media – And Why You Should Ignore Them. Then come back and finish this post.
5. Follow up with Email and Phone calls. Now that your credible company is providing useful content that can be easy found and is a hot topic in social B2B channels, your sales team can use the phone and email to nurture leads throughout your long sales cycles by providing additional information, detailed tech specs, 1-to-1 assistance, etc.

In a nutshell, successful companies generate demand for their products and services by publishing useful content that gets their brand noticed and found. This content takes on many forms in both desktop and mobile formats:

• whitepapers
• blogs
• tweets
• video
• etc…

All of it is designed to work in unison and provide B2B buyers with a rich experience and as much research material as required so they look like rock stars to their peers when it comes time to make the purchase.

Is any of this easy? No. Is it simple? Yes. In fact it’s Marketing 101 updated for today’s technology. If it sounds daunting, ask for help. For example, outscouring the inbound strategy and planning steps can save you a lot of frustration and aggravation.

What are your experiences with traditional and digital B2B marketing? How is your organization integrating inbound marketing programs to generate and nurture leads? Share your thoughts and sound off in the comments below or on Twitter (@SterlingKlor).